This isn't a ghost story, but a hope of a ghost story: We will be honeymooning in New Orleans the weekend of Halloween this year, and even though I was in charge of finding lodgings, my fiance forbade me from seeking out a haunted hotel. So I did due diligence on all the cute boutique hotels we were considering and ruled out any that bragged about being haunted or had yelp reviews mentioning that they were haunted. We found a cute hotel and booked our rooms last week.

But! I later went to google the name of the hotel to get the contact info again, and found that the suggested google dropdown was "[hotel name] haunted." So I went with that search and found out that it's been on ghost-hunter reality shows! Yessss.

This isn't a ghost story, but a hope of a ghost story: We will be honeymooning in New Orleans the weekend of Halloween this year, and even though I was in charge of finding lodgings, my fiance forbade me from seeking out a haunted hotel. So I did due diligence on all the cute boutique hotels we were considering and ruled out any that bragged about being haunted or had yelp reviews mentioning that they were haunted. We found a cute hotel and booked our rooms last week.

But! I later went to google the name of the hotel to get the contact info again, and found that the suggested google dropdown was "[hotel name] haunted." So I went with that search and found out that it's been on ghost-hunter reality shows! Yessss.

PPK is the 3rd group of people I've told about this because it is so creepy.

There's a missing girl in my town, vanished since June. About a month ago I had a nightmare that my body was tossed off a ridge in one of the quarries. I felt the falling, the plunging of my stomach, I felt my lungs fill with cold water, and it was dark. I was in a gunny sack with my hands and feet tied. My hair was blond and flowing-(my hair is a red dyed bob). I heard her voice say, "This is where I am."

It is still bothering me.

I also see ghosts all the time. Mostly quick flashes out of the corner of my eye. I've always dismissed it as something from my partying years.

PPK is the 3rd group of people I've told about this because it is so creepy.

There's a missing girl in my town, vanished since June. About a month ago I had a nightmare that my body was tossed off a ridge in one of the quarries. I felt the falling, the plunging of my stomach, I felt my lungs fill with cold water, and it was dark. I was in a gunny sack with my hands and feet tied. My hair was blond and flowing-(my hair is a red dyed bob). I heard her voice say, "This is where I am."

It is still bothering me.

I also see ghosts all the time. Mostly quick flashes out of the corner of my eye. I've always dismissed it as something from my partying years.

Okay, you guys gave me the courage to report an anonymous tip. I was told they had checked all quarries in the area. Again, I'm not one to really read too much into these things, but it was the most vivid dream I have ever had. More vivid than a sex dream, I felt everything and woke up gasping for air. Sooo, sooo creepy.

Okay, you guys gave me the courage to report an anonymous tip. I was told they had checked all quarries in the area. Again, I'm not one to really read too much into these things, but it was the most vivid dream I have ever had. More vivid than a sex dream, I felt everything and woke up gasping for air. Sooo, sooo creepy.

I am glad you called. It may be that they will look again. Or look more closely. You never know.

I've had a few kind of ghostly experiences, but this is by far the one that's most disturbing to me.

When I was in high school, one of my friends and I used to love to play with a ouija board. I don't know if ouija boards really are bad news, or if they're totally bogus, or somewhere in between, but we used to be regularly "contacted" by someone who really, really disliked me. Like it would say all kinds of nasty shiitake about how I was going to die, and all these things that would happen to me. Could it have been my friend passively-aggressively using the occult to tell me to go fork myself? Possibly. Anyway, the "spirit's" name started with M.

A couple of years later, I was living alone in an apartment. I'd like to emphasize that I was living alone, no one else had keys, and it was tiny--I would definitely notice if anyone else was there, or trying to get in. I spent the evening working on some props for a show I was doing, so I had my paints out, and my sketchbook, and other craft stuff. And I put the stuff I'd painted down on some newspaper to dry and I went to bed.

The next morning, I got up and wandered into my living room. I didn't have my contacts in yet, so everything was blurry, and I thought "Oh, good, all that stuff will be dry by now." And then I thought "I don't remember doing that."

There was this thing sitting on my coffee table--it was a page that had been torn out of my sketchbook and turned over, so the writing was on the back. It was in red paint, and it almost looked as if it had been fingerpainted. It just said DIE in big red letters. And in the bottom corner, also seemingly fingerpainted, was a small "M". And I shiitake you not, the edges of the page were scorched. The edges were burned, and there were scorch marks on the paper.

I thought I was going to just throw up, or pass out, or both. Because the options were that either I forking sleepwalked or something and done this to myself, or that I hadn't done it at all.

I ended up bringing it to school to show my friends to prove to myself that I wasn't crazy. We ended up burning it because we were all so freaked out by it. And I made one of my friends come back to my apartment with me that night. And I noticed just to the side of the door to my apartment was a small but obvious purple "M", like it was written in lipstick or something. fork, I thought I'd never sleep again.

Why do a few of you think jewbacca should have told the police? It was a dream!

If it somehow helps to shed light on what happened to this girl, through potentially suggesting a channel of investigation they might not have previously considered, it could help out those who love her.

as promised. sorry it's so long, but at least i got it written. Parts are changed but it's mostly as it happened.

Douggie saw the hand emerge from the water just as they decided to turn the rowboat around and return to shore.

We had driven in from the small Japanese riverside city where we were both teaching. The city's few tall buildings huddled together against the rice paddies and radish fields that crept in among the city blocks, and wide avenues quickly withered into single-lane roads. Two hours' drive through the fields brought us to the foot of the mountains, and Lake Inawashiro, where we were meeting friends to camp.

The lake shore was pebbles and dirt. Inawashiro was a wonder of modern Japan, an artificial reservoir irrigating thousands of hectares of rice and tobacco. Before the lake, it had been dusty farmland. Nowadays, though there are tundra gooses in the winter and picnickers in the summer, there are no reeds, no algae, no life. The tourist guides blame the acidic water on a nearby volcano, but cheerfully point out that the water is among the clearest fresh water in the world. The guides don't mention that if you jetski on Inawashiro, you will have to carefully avoid submerged branches, which indeed are easily visible through the clear water. For below the surface there are trees, farms, and houses- what remains of the town of Usui.

Everybody knew about the submerged town; the residents had patriotically volunteered to leave for the greater good. Nobody was caught unaware or drowned in their beds, but people saw strange things at Inawashiro nonetheless. A man drowned at the beach, tangled in the branches. Photos taken of him earlier that day came out smudged, with his image missing. People camped at the lake and saw white lights in the trees, or heard crying early in the morning.

We couldn't have cared less. Fifteen twenty-something expat wildlings with a campfire and a whole carload of beer don't take stock in such stories. We camped on the beach, added more cigarette burns to the walls and floors of our tents, piled up empty beer cans. Sunday morning dawned sunny and hot, and we fired up the jetskis. Someone had brought a rowboat, though with no fish to catch it wasn't very useful. Suda's two sons were too small to try the jetskis, and asked to go out in the boat. Douggie and Khalil volunteered to row the boys out to the middle of the lake.

The boys were immediately interested in the underwater branches, and started to talk about how there must be houses, schools, even treasure down below. Douggie and Khalil were quiet and took turns rowing, each thinking to himself that it had been foolish to volunteer to row the boys out. It was hot already, not a cloud in the sky. Doug had forgotten his cigarettes back at the campsite, and really wanted a smoke. Khalil remarked that the lake reminded him of a calm day he had spent on the Baltic sea.

By this time the boat was out far enough that the boys could only recognize their father on the beach by his red shirt. The wind was still, and the sun was scorching. “Let's bring it in,” said Khalil. “I'm dying of thirst.” The boys didn't protest, so Khalil started to turn the boat around.

As the boat turned, Douggie saw the hand. Not a foot from the boat, it slowly rose out of the water to the wrist, the fingers flexed as if holding a softball. It was purple. Doug felt his throat begin to close, and his own hand felt for his pants pocket. The inhaler wasn't there. “Oh shiitake,” he croaked. Khalil knew Douggie well enough to know what was happening. We all knew he had asthma. “You'll be okay, man, we're not that far from shore.” Doug couldn't take his eyes off the hand to glance back over his shoulder and see how far they had to go. He screwed his eyes shut for a second, then had to look again. It must be a latex glove, someone's trash, maybe just a trick of the light. The sun was bright. No, the hand was still there, a few meters behind them now. Khalil turned his head to see what Douggie was looking at. He clenched his jaw tight and looked back at Doug. “Look at me.” Doug wheezed. “Doug, we'll be there in a second. Relax. Boys, Doug's having an asthma attack and we're going to try to make it back to shore as fast as we can. Doug. It's nothing.” Khalil pulled hard, again and again, the boys yelling “Yoi! Yoi!” with each stroke. As they got closer to the shore, one of the boys stood and yelled for his father to get the inhaler. Doug still looked out across the water, his back to the us, hands gripping his bench seat. When the boat was close enough, Jeff and I heaved it in, while Suda put the inhaler in Doug's hand, and helped him out of the boat. Doug huffed mightily, again and again; the kids hopped out and went over to the cooler. Khalil jumped out of the boat and pulled Jeff over to the side. Quietly, but loud enough for me to hear, he said “I need to go back out on the lake.” “What, you lose a hat?” “Sh. There's a body out there. We managed to turn before the kids saw it. Come and help me bring it in.” Jeff had been a paramedic in Canada. Khalil went over to the tent, unclipped the rain fly and returned, and they both got in the boat and shoved off. Suda's bigger son called from the cooler, “Can't he make up his mind? He wanted to come back.” I went over to Doug, who was no longer breathing hard. He was flushed and his eyes were watering. “There was a hand out there.” “You sure? You've been drinking for two days, it's hot...” “I SAW it. It came up out of the water.” “That's why they're going back.” “Yeah. It rose up.” “Calm down buddy. Let me get you a bottle of water.” “Thanks.”I went over to Suda. He was standing under a tree next to the car. “Doug says there's a body out there.” We both looked out at the boat, which was almost still. Khalil was standing up and looking out towards the center, then sat down again. Jeff started rowing again. “They're going out to look for it. I don't know if there's really a body or not. Do you want the kids here if there is?” “Hm. Probably not.” Suda called, “Taro, Kai, want to go get some ice cream?” The kids came running to the car. They didn't notice that the boat had stopped, and that Khalil was sitting in the boat, holding the rain fly in his hand while Jeff was taking off his belt.

Later, when Suda and the kids returned, the gurney had just been loaded into the back of the ambulance. It had been a girl, maybe twenty, with a cute short haircut. She was wearing a peach-colored button down shirt over her bathing suit. Her mouth had been open, her eyes closed, her skin purple. One arm reached up high, the other pushed straight out in front of her chest. I had called the ambulance as soon as I saw Jeff loop his belt around the hand. The paramedics arrived surprisingly quickly, just after the rowboat reached the shore. They didn't ask many questions, just looked at the girl and packed her up. We all stood around, suddenly sober. Jeff asked if the girl had been reported missing. The driver shrugged. “Lots of drinking out here on the lake. People don't realize they're not strong swimmers, and they drown. You'd be surprised how often it happens. Can we have someone's phone number in case the police have any questions?” Jeff went to his car and got his wallet and pulled out a card, passed it to the ambulance driver. He nodded and pocketed the card. Suda's younger son seemed to be all eyes. The ambulance driver looked at him and smiled. “You want to see the inside of the ambulance?” Kai's eyes got even bigger. He jerked his head no and took off running. The ambulance driver laughed, winked at Suda, got in and drove away.

The wife seems to be acutely aware of places she feels have been the scene of some horrible past violence. More than once we've been somewhere (usually but not always an older building) where she'll freeze up and can't continue on without some reassurances and lots of prompting.

We lived in a semi-rural area outside of Los Angeles which featured what had once been an old blacksmith barn and trading post building or something like that. It had been converted into a quaint little shopping center with boutiques and a Mexican restaurant, but the original structure was mostly intact.

Upon entrance to the dimly lit open area between shops she stopped dead in her tracks and proclaimed that the spot felt (her words, not mine) "rape-y," and she was noticeably unsettled until we left soon after. We've never bothered to follow up to see if anything bad had ever happened at any of these spots, mostly for fear of the worst.

I don't have a supernatural bone in my body, and am generally as skeptical toward intangible phenomena as they come, but I've also never seen anybody so immediately charged by her surroundings.

#1: In college I was dating this guy who was living in his mom's second home since she lived in another state. When you drove into the community you could clearly see that they had intended on building 3 communities but built 1.5 and just stopped. Basically they discovered they were building on indian burial ground and had to send a letter to all the people who were already living there to apologize. One night we were watching TV in the living room and all of the sudden the curtains start blowing like crazy and the air was off and the doors were closed. Then the tv kept turning itself off. Finally we got fed up and went into the bedroom. Before we could turn the tv on, it turned itself on and flipped to a program on the History channel about Native Americans! The room also got really cold and his cat was meowing at the corner of the room. Creepy!

#2: My parents' house was built in 1935. When they bought the house 20+ years ago they did a remodel and added on a totally new section of the house. The old section actually feels creepy. About 10 years ago my mom had a family reunion and most of the people stayed at their house. My one aunt totally believed in the paranormal but her son and my my other aunt didn't. They were joking about how the music room was haunted and what not. Finally it was time for bed but my aunt and her son were now too afraid to sleep in the old guest room so they were going to get their things and sleep in the newer family room. They were like "it's just a house, nothing to be afraid of" but as they walked past the music room all 3 at once clearly heard the crystal chandelier crash to the ground so they ran back to the other side of the house and waited for someone to wake up. However, no one else heard it because it actually didn't fall. There have also been other incidents of footsteps on the stairs and doors closing themselves. I love that house!

I know of a few people who have had things happen to them, but I never give it much credit. I also think most "paranormal" stories in old houses can be attributed to old plumbing, house settling, mice, etc. I did have one thing happen to me though that I could never explain away, it's not super creepy or anything just weird.

I was about 12 years old and staying with my great aunt. She lived in a slightly older home probably built in the 1920s, a craftman's style house with an attached front porch. This porch was a three season porch so it had glass windows and a front screen door. You had to walk through this porch to get to the front door of the house. The front door was an old heavy wooden door with little glass windows on the top of it that had curtains hanging over them.

It was afternoon and I was sleeping on the couch with my aunt's dog, in the livingroom, about 5 feet away from the front door. My aunt was out of the house, at work. I was awoken by the door handle turning back and forth rapidly like someone was really trying to get into the house. My aunt's dog, a beagle, was also awoken from her nap by this and was sitting up staring and whimpering at the door handle as well. That's how I know I wasn't still dreaming since I wasn't the only one seeing this. Once it stopped I cautiously walked up to the front door and peeked out of one of the windows. There was no one on the porch. I walked out of the front door onto the porch and saw that the screen door leading into the porch was latched and locked from the inside as were the windows. There could not have been anyone on the porch trying to turn the door handle.

The house my friend lives in was used at one point as an old folks' home, so I'm sure people died there. It's also directly across the street from a cemetery. Even though she is fixing the house up, it's still kind of creepy. Her son has a wooden farm animal puzzle. The pieces have sensors on them, and they make noise when you put them in the correct space. So when you put the cow puzzle piece in the cow-shaped space, it will make a moo sound, etc. Only, it goes off when no one is in the room. It doesn't matter if all the pieces are in or out of the puzzle, you will randomly hear farm animal noises throughout the day. It's probably nothing, but still pretty weird...

My friend was sitting in the same room one day when an old heavy ashtray that was in front of her broke right in two. No one was touching it, there was no cigarette in it, it literally just split in half for no reason (I told her the ghosts obviously want her to quit smoking!). I've heard footsteps in that house when no one else was around. It's just generally creepy.

There have been plenty of weird goings-on in my house too, but I'll just freak myself out if I talk about them too much!